


this isn't ours.

by voksen



Category: A Dark Room (Doublespeak Games)
Genre: F/F, Pastiche
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:23:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voksen/pseuds/voksen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>but if you fixed it, it could belong to both of us.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this isn't ours.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [renquise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/renquise/gifts).



been cloudy for a while now.

something to do with the weather, not the steelworks. just happens this way, builder said. sun shines through, moon too. don't worry, she said. you'll be able to see well enough to get home.

it was cloudy when she first came. gray and dark. been a long time since.

go out to the village to check traps. find some of the little furry creatures with the long tails that the villagers like best. find two traps broken and a half-eaten lizard nearby. bring everything back to builder.

don't stay to watch her fix them.

 

cloudy out here too on the plain. builder was right: sun's bright enough to see by. kill another lizard, toss it up on the wagon whole. more scales, builder always says, more scales whenever you can. more teeth, if I can't use them someone else can.

swords feel good in hands, rifle too.

nowhere to go, nothing to look for. desert's good as anything, better than caves. wide and open, almost empty enough. compass points nowhere. follow it.

sand dips down, ahead, a hollow where the light isn't. stop for a while to think about it.

have meat, have water.

broken ruins on the horizon off where the compass says w-like-wanderer. remember that. trace out the letters with the bayonet in the sand.

watch the hollow.

keep going. it's only earth.

 

moon reflects through the clouds. everything else too small, too broken, too far away. wonder if builder thinks of stars.

kill a few men who try to hide behind dunes. strip their furs, take their bullets.

keep going.

 

body weighs the same in the hollow as on the flat. shouldn't be strange. been here too long and not long enough.

sift through bones, looking for something to take back. something different.

something that will make her bare her wide flat teeth like spear braces. maybe reach out, touch an arm. maybe more, like when she saw the sulphur, like when she made the first bullet. leaving dark streaks from coalwork through rags and across hide.

don't find any teeth here. don't find any scales.

bones crumble under hands. let the dust fall back down.

keep going.

 

midpoint of the hollow before the moonlight shows them. clouds too thick. should have seen it from the flats. thick chunks of alloy, big and lumpy as builder's torso under all the furs. three of them.

 

no sign of where they came from. no harvesters. nothing else. just dry bones.

 

don't know what builder will do. put them in the wagon anyway. stayed too long looking for more. low on meat now. have to go to the city instead of back to builder's fire.

take meat from the city, take water. take everything. find a man chopping all the hands off a body. new rifle on his back. take that too. kill everything on the way out. easy.

keep going.

 

sun's up again.

still cloudy.

moon's fading.

 

alloy's not heavy. iron's heavier, steel's heavier. takes longer to walk back anyway. sun's up.

give the rifles to villagers on the way to the fire. their hands are the right size to use them without builder fixing the stocks.

 

you were away longer, builder says. shrug like she does. feels stranger than usual. she bares her teeth.

feels good.

four lines scratched in the dirt. use a stick of wood instead of the bayonet because she's watching. tried to make a map for her once. blunted the steel digging too deep. she didn't understand it. scolded about the bayonet. haven't done that again. click out the coordinates even though she can't hear.

you went west, builder says. what did you find?

alloy's under the furs, under the cloth, under the teeth and scales. builder stops when she finds it. touches it, both flat blunt hands.

this isn't ours, builder says.

don't know what she wants. shrug again. go while she's still staring, quiet like thieves. get more meat, more water in the village. leave the same way.

 

wander.

 

there's more hollows. don't wait this time. keep going. in and down. don't think builder liked the alloy. take it anyway. stop in outposts, refill water, stock meat.

still cloudy. been out a while when ice falls out of them, turns the earth white. pick it up, put it in the tank.

think about the fire. think about builder without furs and without words. hands shaking, curled up around them. not afraid. offering help.

keep going. been here too long.

 

kill something new.

shadowy under dim sunlight, shadowy under the torch. long tendrils like docking chains. howls like the wind when it's shot. can't see its mouth but it bites too hard. take medicine meant for the coughing sickness. works for this too.

can't get it on the wagon. falls apart into ash like bone dust. won't burn. can't do anything with it. leave it there.

builder would have wanted to see it.

 

find a wanderer who's stopped wandering. killed too much, he says. found too much. got tired of it. got tired of everything. staying here.

don't know about that but it's good to be heard again. give him things builder doesn't want. take meat in trade. don't ask how he knows about trade. doesn't matter. talk about coordinates instead.

stay a while but not too long. he doesn't sound right.

sun's up.

find a laser rifle buried under more alloy. drop three swords on the ground to pick it up. builder changed them to fit bigger hands. this was already made to fit. she won't need to fix it.

pick them up again. leave behind a pile of cloth instead.

 

go back.

traps are wrecked again, someone says, passing by. there was an attack. soldiers. they fought them off but builder's busy building. unload half the wagon for them. leave the alloy by the fire.

the fire is flickering. builder's not here, but there's still wood.

stoke it. wait. don't know what for.

builder comes back before dark. she has more furs on than before. making noises, pushing white air on her hands from her mouth. it's cold, she says.

reach over and put more wood on the fire until it doesn't seem cloudy inside.

thank you, builder says.

 

the fire is roaring.

builder sits down too close anyway. didn't know if you were coming back, she says. can't do anything with that metal yet. it corrodes everything but itself. with more maybe I can.

there's room for more wood in the fire. stoke it again.

builder bares her teeth. missed you, too, she says.

there's no coal dust on her hands. still leaves marks.

 

hold her, afterwards. doesn't fit between arms as well as the laser rifle. no slots for hands. no alloy sheen, no energy hum.

she murmurs quietly. can't tell what she says. doesn't matter.

reach over and push another log into the fire without waking her.

 

gather wood before checking the compass again. have to go further out into the forest to find brush and branches, now. don't really need to.

plenty of builder's kind willing to do it in trade.

 

clouds finally break a day out into the barrens. sun's too bright, too close to see much else beyond the atmosphere. can see the snipers from well off, though. only take a few bullets before they're lasered down nice and clean. no blood on the furs. no ruined meat.

should get more energy cells before they run low. didn't want to show the rifle to builder, though. stupid. can't forget how she touched the alloy. don't want to remind her how different everything is.

stupid. who could forget.

 

sun's going down. last rays diffract like the air around the steelworks. under them something iridesces with the frequency of alloy but sharper. stronger.

touch the little ship like builder would, two hands unnaturally flat on its skin.

it's old. broken. can feel from here something's wrong deep inside. don't know what or how to fix it. unload the wagon. leave a pile of metal and bone and meat in the dust. there isn't room for anything else. this is a way out.

 

oh, she says. oh.

 

showed the laser rifle to builder. killed a raider with it. gave her the last energy cells. haven't been out since.

stay in the room. stoke the fire, keep it hot. room's never been too cold for wanderers. builder gets too cold too easy. can't even go into the wilds.

 

light of the fire spills outside, into the dark. light of builder's alloy arc-welder spills inside. hull is spaceworthy again. engine still stutters, but it's sounding better every day. not much time left. too much time left.

 

half-burn a stick in the fire. trace builder's letters dark like coal on the hearth.

forget some. remember more. wipe it clean and start again.

 

when builder comes in late, shedding furs in the firelight til she's bare as bone, tell her:

_space is cold  
the fire is dead_

she'll know how to build something to fix it.


End file.
